David Durham - Pride of Carthage

As the man's mouth moved, the world around them took greater form and substance. Gadeer crouched below wood beams and the slight to-and-fro of his head in contrast to the beams betrayed the rocking of the sea. Mago could feel that more men stood nearby, but he did not wish to address them. One face was enough to focus on. There was a growing sensation spreading over his body that he would have disdained as well, but the swell of it was inescapable, pulsing.

“Where am I?” Mago asked. He knew that he had asked the question before, received an answer, and should remember it still, but he did not.

“Bound for Carthage,” Gadeer said. “It is night. The watch reported passing Aleria on Corsica while you were sleeping. They saw the lights. We are now in open water. I'm sorry to wake you, but we must decide. We have no physician, but all who have seen you believe that we cannot wait any longer. By the gods, we wish we could get you to Carthage first, but in truth we cannot.”

Despite the growing pressure that clenched and released his entire body, Mago understood the words the man spoke. He just did not know what they meant. They had no context. “What are you talking about?”

Gadeer drew back. His wide nose flared and relaxed. He had smooth brown skin untroubled by the passing years, freckled about the nose and forehead. “It's your leg. . . . My friend, your leg must come off.”

This was an even less substantial statement. “Speak truth! I don't understand you.”

It saddened Gadeer to hear this. “Near Genua,” he said, “the Romans pressed us into battle. They repelled our elephants. Your leg was broken in a fall—”

“Genua?”

“In the north of Italy. Our plan was bold, General, but we failed. . . .”

Gadeer went on speaking, but Mago's mind caught on those last two words. With them the horror of it all came back to him. He remembered the last few months in one complete burst. He had left Iberia for the Balearics and on landing heard the first rumor of Hasdrubal's demise. This shocked him almost to immobility, but it also made action that much more urgent. He spent a few hard weeks trying to convince any of the islanders to join his fight. He assured them that Hannibal was on the verge of destroying Roman power. He explained how the landing of one more force in the north would clinch it all. The Ligurians and Gauls would join them and they would sweep down from one direction while Hannibal roared up from the other. They would trap Rome between the two of them and squeeze it like a fat pimple between two sharp nails. Fine hyperbole, but what finally swayed them was his promise that in addition to the normal pay for the season he personally promised them an extra payment of wine and women, just as their ancestors had accepted in days of old.

Midwinter, boatloads of Moors belatedly answered his entreaties and landed on the island, offering themselves as mercenaries. They were a blessing from the gods of Africa, the obverse of Gallic grandeur: big men, lean and tall, with long-fingered hands, bulbous knuckles, and skin as dark and smooth as oiled mahogany. As Mago set about training them he tried to believe his own rhetoric and held on to a daydream in which Hasdrubal had not been killed. He was alive and fooling everyone, perhaps playing out some ploy of Hannibal's.

But like so many bursts of enthusiasm throughout the war, this one proved short-lived. Arriving in Ligurian territory, Mago found that Ligurians and Gauls alike treated him coolly, with a dismissive air verging on outright insult. It turned out that both peoples had of late suffered Roman retribution for their support of Carthage. Two legions operated from well-fortified camps throughout the spring and early summer, hammering at the tribal powers at will. The Ligurians and Gauls had grown bitter toward the Carthaginian cause: angry with Hasdrubal for dying, with Hannibal for failing to aid them, with Mago for letting so much of the summer pass before he arrived.

Again Mago found himself calling on all his powers of persuasion, a task made more difficult when the Romans made him the focus of their campaigns. They shadowed his every move, hemmed him in, blocked his chosen routes, and struck at him during any moment of weakness. They pounced on whatever people he had last visited with such fury that soon no tribe would even consent to meet him. They had him at every disadvantage, and still no word came from Hannibal. Instead he saw only confirmation of Hasdrubal's demise. Reluctantly, he decided to retreat. Maybe, he thought, they could risk sailing south and land nearer to Hannibal.

Before he could break for the sea, a third Roman army appeared. How the Romans could still field new armies confounded him, as did the bold vigor with which they attacked and the underlying events that made the attack possible. That was why he finally came to do battle with all three of them. He was near enough that he could smell the sea, but he had no choice but to turn and fight. His fifteen thousand were vastly outnumbered, low in morale. Mago was caught in the center of this, shouting what direction he could from horseback, and his mount had indeed caught a thrown pilum in her chest. The horse had reared just as in the dream. He had been pinned beneath her on a sharp ridge of rock. But that was where any resemblance to his dream ended. The impact snapped his femur and the pain exploded out of him in a howl of animal intensity. His men rallied around him and pried the horse up using pikes. Someone tugged on him too quickly, before his ankle was free. The thick muscles of his thigh contracted and the leg bone folded. As they dragged him from the field the jagged end of his femur seemed to snag on anything and everything. All manner of debris caught in the wound, dirt and filth, bits of leaves and other men's blood. Each contact sent him into convulsions of pain.

He had sweltered for two evil days in a hut along the shore before a messenger found them with the recall from the Council. He was carried aboard a vessel and had been in its hull since, feverish, in physical anguish, awash in the wine they poured down him and the urine and sweat that drenched the bed, only vaguely understanding that Hannibal too must have been ordered to leave Italy and that the dreaded Publius Scipio was on African soil.

All of this came back to him with Gadeer's admission of their failure. He remembered his wound too vividly to look down at it again, but the pain of it had come back to him fully. It was the center of his being. It was from his left thigh that his heart beat, and each contraction propelled pain through him.

He realized that Gadeer had left him sometime during these musings and was just now returning. Another man followed him, also a Moor. This man carried a sword he had sometimes seen Moors wield. It was similar to the Iberians' curving falcata, except heavier, thicker. It was a weapon to be swung in sweeping arcs with the intention of doing lethal damage with a single blow. Seeing the direction of Mago's eyes, the man carrying it seemed embarrassed and moved the sword out of view.

Gadeer held out a halved gourd. “Drink this. It's an infusion from my people. It won't stop you from feeling pain, but it will prevent you from caring about it. A man jumped across from one of the other boats to bring it. We all want very much for you to be well.”

Mago took the cup between both his quivering hands and craned his neck forward. He managed to get most of the liquid in his mouth, although some poured down into the creases below his chin. The concoction was bitter, grainy, and filled with floating bits of leaf that stuck in his teeth and to the roof of his mouth. But it was cool. It was other than wine. From the moment his head flopped back against the bunk he believed it might help him. If he could only breathe through the pain and pass on to someplace else. . . . Then everything would be better. He felt the promise of someplace else dissolving into the room around him, fizzing in the air like bubbles in water. He closed his eyes and tried to listen to air and think only of breathing, but Gadeer would not let him be.